Hesse

Much of a family’s history is tied up in places as much as in people. Both sides of my own family reach back to locations in Germany. My father’s side left the home country only in the early part of the twentieth century (and there is family lore that puts portions of it in the midst of the Russian Revolution a century ago), while my mother’s side — via the Marstellers — arrived in North America in the latter part of the seventeenth century, making them amongst the pioneer settlers of what became the United States.

While most of the places my family settled are in the States — including southeastern Pennsylvania, northeastern Iowa, and the central Pacific coast of California — the German locations are very interesting to me, and the most ripe for additional research. In this entry, I’d like to give some background on the region of present-day southwest Germany that was once ruled by the House of Hesse, centering on the town of Pfungstadt.